Mitch Malloy has released a number of albums since his self-titled 1992 debut, even while fashioning a career as a mixer and mastering engineer with Taylor Swift, Kenny Loggins and others. Yet, your average rock fan has the same question.
“Weren’t you that guy in Van Halen?,” Malloy says, in this new clip from a forthcoming documentary called Van Halen’s Lost Boy. “I get asked that a lot.”
Things really ramped up with the 2008 publication of Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga, which retold the story of his flirtation with Eddie Van Halen and Co. in the immediate aftermath of their split with Sammy Hagar in the mid 1990s.
Malloy says he had been tapped to take over, and had even started working on new music, only to split with the group after a pop-culture moment that he watched with everyone else on MTV. Roth famously appeared during the Video Music Awards with Van Halen, his first appearance since leaving in 1985.
“I was, like, ‘What?’ My jaw just dropped,” Malloy says. “Then, I was just like: ‘What are they doing? Why is Dave with them? This is not good for me.’ It just hit me at that time now the whole world thought that Dave was back in the band — and wanted Dave back in the band, including me. I mean, I grew up on Van Halen with Dave in it.”
Malloy was told that MTV had engineered the move as a stunt, that Roth was not officially back as a member. Still, he clearly felt like he had been stabbed in the back. “When I saw Dave come out with them,” Malloy adds, “that was it for me. It was over. … This can’t work for me.”
In addition to this new film, Malloy has also finished a song called “It’s the Right Time” that includes Eddie and Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony, fashioned from a track that was given to him during their brief time together. Malloy says Eddie asked him to finish the track back then, and he’s finally done so.
Meanwhile, Roth’s reunion with Van Halen was short lived. The band later re-emerged for a much-reviled, similarly brief partnership with Gary Cherone. Roth wouldn’t come back full time until 2007.
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you know, after listening to that song, maybe this band was headed in the same (pop whatever) direction it ended up at, no matter who the lead singer was.